Men’s Hockey: No. 3 Terriers start their season 2-0, defeating Union 4-1
Featured image by Spirit Veron
By Jose Rodriguez
The Boston University Terriers (2-0-0, 0-0-0 HEA) scored three goals in the first period to defeat the Union College Garnet Chargers (2-1-0, 0-0-0 ECAC) 4-1 on Saturday night at Agganis Arena.
BU has scored nine goals in the previous two games to open up the 2024 campaign.
“Yeah, I mean obviously we are really skilled offensively. We got some great talent, we are a deep team and I think we just got to continue doing that…” Cole Eiserman said post-game. “We had some couple mistakes that can definitely be fixed but those are things that we got to iron out in the first couple weeks.”
During the game’s first five minutes, the Garnet Chargers aggressively attacked the Terriers zone, managing six shots on goal as they sought to take the lead.
Drew Sutton had an opportunity to take an early lead, but BU goaltender Mathieu Caron denied Sutton’s shot.
The Terriers were eager to score first, finding some grade-A chances that they narrowly missed, but BU eventually found their rhythm, scoring twice in just over a minute and fifty-two seconds.
Captain Shane Lachance netted his first of the season off a pass from linemate Quinn Hutson.
Soon after, the Terriers took advantage of a power play opportunity, as Alex Zetterberg scored his second in as many games, beating goalie Kyle Chauvette. Tom Willander and Jack Harvey were credited with the assists.
Riley Brueck came close to narrowing the lead at the 6:33 mark, but Caron made a tough save, sacrificing his body to keep Union from scoring.
Late in the period, the Garnet Chargers had a 5-4 power play opportunity, but it was quickly negated when Ben Muthersbaugh received a slashing call.
Capitalizing on the 4 v. 4 opportunity, freshmen phenoms Cole Hutson and Eiserman combined for a highlight reel goal.
Hutson went coast-to-coast with the puck and, as he took a big hit, found Eiserman in the slot, who went five-hole, giving BU a cushiony 3-0 lead heading into the second.
“I think we are lucky that we came out of that first period up 3-0,” Coach Jay Pandolfo said. “They were carrying the play for the first ten minutes… We certainly have to be better defensively. Making sure that we are killing plays and not spending much time in our own net and I thought that was a bit of a problem early on but we did get better during the course of the game. Early on in the season you expect that we have a younger team with a lot of young defensemen and a lot of young forwards so you just have to take something from each game and learn from it.”
The Terriers were eager to capitalize on their momentum in the second frame.
Just five minutes into the period, Lachance took a shot that narrowly missed, hitting the right side of the goalpost.
However, a stint in their momentum came as Parker Lindauer beat Caron for his first of the season, narrowing in on BU’s lead.
Shortly after, on a strong blast from Kamil Bednarik, Harvey tapped in the shot, redirecting the puck and giving the Terriers back their three-goal lead.
The final period was not short of excitement.
Back-to-back power play opportunities gave BU ample chances to score, but they could not capitalize.
As the game approached the 15-minute mark, assistant captain Devin Kaplan attempted to set up Eiserman, but an unfortunate misstep caused Eiserman to lose control, and the Terriers missed the chance to stretch the gap further.
“I thought the penalty kill was very good,” Pandolfo said about his PK unit. “Joe Pereira runs our kill and has done a really good job at it and trying to be a little bit more aggressive and I think we saw that tonight.”
The Terriers will look to go 3-0 to start the season as they prepare for their first conference matchup against the UConn Huskies. The Hockey East contest is set for Friday, Oct 18th, for a 7 p.m. puck drop. Streaming will be available on ESPN+ and NESN.